Vendors, take note!

There's a new survey out in which CIOs were interviewed for their views on how they prefer to be approached, or ignored, by IT vendors.  The good news for vendors is that more than three quarters of those interviewed feel vendor reps act professionally.

That said, the interviewees didn't hesitate to add some meat to their responses to the survey questions.  For example, the first question was, "In general, are you open to being pitched by vendors?"  One of the offered responses was, "Yes, by phone or electronic communication (email, LinkedIn message, Twitter direct message), but only 16% of respondents were open to that many avenues of approach.  Moreover, even those we were open to both phone and email, etc., offered additional comments such as "But please learn to take 'Not Interested' gracefully!" and "I'm open to learning, but the subject matter and approach must make it worth my time."

Another question was "How do you feel about vendors speaking directly to clinicians or administrative staff?"  While more, nearly 42%, said they didn't mind, one respondent added "I don't mind them having the conversation, but they need to have the common courtesy to also have a conversation with me, especially if there is technology or IT resources required."

When it comes to following up with CIOs who ignored vendors' initial contacts, 79% checked "Stop contacting me-if I was interested, I would have responded," and one CIO drove home the point by emphasizing that "re-forwarding the same email never works,

sending a blind meeting invite never works," and "using my first name (from a sales database) never works, as I go by my middle name. Using my first name only gets the email deleted sooner."

With luck, we've piqued your interest, so the full survey can be found here.

Photo courtesy of sillygwailo via Creative Commons